by Ray Connolly
“Yes. But go on.”
Greg seemed pleased to have an audience. "Well, think about it. Why is it that certain singers become loved all over the world, whether or not the listener can understand a word they're singing? Bing Crosby did, Elvis did and John Lennon did, and a few others, too. Right now it’s Jesse Gadden’s turn.”
"With the first two wasn't it something about happening along at the right moment, when radio and records were taking off.”
"That led to the sound of their voices being globally exploited, yes. But other voices were around as well. It doesn't explain why they and no-one else became loved in their time more than…well, almost anyone on earth.”
"Is that true?”
"I think so. The individual human voice, some human voices, anyway, put to a tune, are among the most adored things on the planet."
"Perhaps these guys were just better at it than anybody else."
"That’s also true. But why should singers be popular anyway? Why do singers get more offers of sex than anybody else? And they do. In the purely evolutionary sense, successful sportsmen or generals, rich businessmen or top politicians should get all the women, not weedy little rock singers."
“Okay! Why? Go on, tell me.”
Greg drew himself up higher on the bench. "Well, what if the particular sounds some singers make touch subconscious triggers, making the listener particularly open to suggestion and emotion?"
Kate didn’t answer, but turned her head back across the park, remembering the sounds of the choristers in Westminster Abbey.
"It's only a theory, of course, Greg Passfield's Theory of the Primeval Inner Voice. But I suspect shamans and primitive holy men may have had a touch of this. That's how they were able to control people. And perhaps that's what guys like Jesse Gadden are tapping into when they sing."
"A touch of…?"
"Well…I call it aural magic."
"Aural magic." She played with the words. "And that's why some singers are so popular?"
He shrugged. “Maybe. And powerful, too, because their particular aural magic can now he heard everywhere in the world, at every second of the day, unlike the village shaman who never drew much of a crowd outside his wigwam."
“Powerful?”
"Well, yes. Obviously. When they're really ticking, these guys hold the thru-route to our sub-conscious. They have us in thrall. That's power, all right."
Kate considered this. Was Jesse Gadden powerful? She thought about the half-million fans in Hyde Park and the legions of worshippers on the websites. And then she thought about the Glee Club and Beverly and even her sister-in-law, Nell, all unquestioningly loyal.
"John Lennon talked about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus," Greg was continuing. "But I don't think he quite realised what he was saying. Think of what could have been achieved if that energy had been directed to some single cause. Think how much good the Beatles could have generated in the world!”
"Or how much bad, if they'd used it wrongly."
“Ah, well! You know what they say: the devil has all the best tunes."
"Will you help me?" Kate asked. “I’ll pay you.”
"Help you do what?"
"Find out what’s going on. Puncture the myth of Jesse Gadden as the giveaway saint of rock music."
"Why?"
"Because that’s what reporters are supposed to do, tell the truth about liars. If we don't, what are we but a bunch of fans with laptops and soft focus cameras."
Greg liked that. "Okay! Why not? Let's see what we can find. Do we have a starting point?"
"Several, but the kids around him interest me most. They're like a commune. Both loving and then menacing to order. Who are they? Where do they come from? Do any of them ever leave and get normal jobs? They've certainly never talked if they have done?”
"And what about you?" Greg asked as, dropping their empty coffee cups into a litter bin, they began to make their way through the park towards
Trafalgar Square
. "What are you going to be doing?" "I'm going to be looking for stuff on Sister Grace. I want to know what happened on that cliff top."
There was a shoal of emails waiting for her when she got home. Most were fan replies to her questions about Jesse Gadden's childhood, offering no new information. Nearly a dozen, however, were responses to her request for information about JESSE'S WEDNESDAY CLUB. Ruth from Havelock North in New Zealand had written: “Welcome to Jesse's Wednesday Club. Surprised it took a real fan so long to cotton on. Don't you ever listen to the lyrics? Try Wasted Working Wednesday on Chance Meadows Morn and we'll see you next May if you can make it this far. Otherwise I suppose the original will have to do.”
See her where next year? The fans' answers were as cryptic as the lyrics. Another message was from South Wales. “Some of us go by coach, the last Wednesday in May, if you're interested. Let me know if you want to join in.”
Reaching across to the stack of Jesse Gadden CDs she slipped Chance Meadows Morn into her computer and scanned the lyrics in the booklet as she listened. As the record came on, she found the lines: "Going down to Tarlton the last week in May, Tasting the sea, cheating with me, on a wasted working Wednesday."
It was just Jesse Gadden singing about the simple pleasures of taking time off from work to go to somewhere called Tarlton and sit by the sea.
She looked at other Wednesday Club messages: the vast majority were from American fans, writing of days in Tarlton, North Carolina and Tarlton in Washington State. Then there were some from Australia, inviting her to Tarlton, New South Wales, a few from the south of England, one from Cheshire and three from Canada.
Was it possible that simply by mentioning the name of a town in a song, Jesse Gadden could make anywhere called Tarlton a centre for day excursions?
It was too late to call anywhere in England, but getting the number from Google, she called the tourist office in Tarlton, Washington State. A gossipy, middle aged assistant called Estelle was amused by the question. “Yes. You’re right. The police department noticed it first. For some reason there’s a small increase in the number of day trippers visiting us the last Wednesday in May.”
"And what do the trippers do when they come to your town?” Kate enquired.
"Not much, so far as we can see. They just seem to sit around all day."
"And on bad weather days?"
Estelle chuckled. "The same. This year was awful. It rained all day. But they didn't mind. They just sat in their cars and listened to their MP3s. Nice people, young, but not raucous. I mean, they didn't cause any trouble. No arrests for drugs or drunkenness or anything like that. Seems a kind of strange thing to do though, doesn’t it?”
Chapter Twenty Three
October 18:
The two mothers stood and prayed, their shoulders almost touching in the cramped pew, like pillars supporting one another. From the other side of the small, modern, brick chapel Kate watched. Mourning makes the most unlikely companions, she thought, then, bowing her head, she listened to the prayer.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” an elderly man in a loose brown suit intoned. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...”
At the back of the chapel someone pressed a button on a CD player and the thin, quavering keyboard sound of Jerusalem began. The ranks of mourners stared ahead without expression. Then, at a nod from the man in the brown suit, the lacquered, shining coffin bearing the remains of Sebastian Peter Browne slid forward on the conveyor belt towards the curtain.
In the front row the stouter, elder of the two women, Mary Browne, exhaled a deep, broken breath of emotion and dropped her head forward. At her side the other woman, tall and leaner, and, in her late forties, perhaps fifteen years younger, put a hand out in support. She was Carol Dennis, Beverly’s mother.
They were worlds apart, Mary Browne, a forceful widow, her iron grey hair clipped back behind her ears, and Carol Dennis, a fey, pretty, blonde divorcee, but the grief they shared bound them together. There
’d been a delay with formalities in Galway before the bodies had been released to the parents. Now, while Beverly’s father had returned to Chicago with the remains of his daughter, Carol Dennis had stopped off in London to attend Seb’s funeral.
The hymn finished and there were an uncertain few moments. One of Seb’s relatives blew his nose. Then, as Mary Browne led the way out of the chapel, the small congregation followed. Kate watched as they passed: a couple of aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbours, an old school friend and a small contingent from WSN led by Neil Fraser.
Outside on the forecourt the mourners waited in the October rain, unsure of what to do next. A small down of flowers had been piled by the undertakers on the paved drive and Mary Browne began going through the tributes, carefully making a note of the names of the senders. Kate could see where her son had learned his thoroughness.
Before the service she’d introduced herself and given her condolences to both mothers, Carol Dennis replying with the frozen smile of someone determined not to break down. Now, as the mourners began to drift away before they were overtaken by the following funeral, some of the tension had eased.
“Beverly told us about you,” Carol Dennis said, approaching Kate. “She enjoyed working with you. She said she wanted to be like you one day.”
“She could have been anything she wanted.”
Carol Dennis forced a watery smile. She had a thin, stretched face, with pale eyes. Beverly, an only child, had been like her, though bigger boned. “It all seems so poignant now,” she said, “but I can’t help thanking God that He chose to grant her greatest wish before He took her from us.”
“Yes,” Kate said flatly. She’d never felt comfortable in the presence of those who knew God’s mind.
“I mean her speaking to Jesse Gadden.”
For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard properly.
“It may not seem much of an ambition in His universal scheme of things, and Beverly would have grown out of it, I’m sure, but you know how girls are at that age. She was such a fan. I only wish I’d not been so...” Carol Dennis stopped as regret overcame her.
Kate frowned. This was difficult. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding...” she began, then hesitated. Did it matter if this poor woman had got the story back to front?
“Yes?”
She was sorry she’d started now. “Well, what I was going to say was, Beverly was involved in planning a programme about Jesse Gadden, which she loved doing. But I don’t think they ever actually spoke.”
Mrs Dennis smiled. “Oh, but they did.” The voice was certain, the eyes shining. “Didn’t you know?”
Kate felt the muscles of her face tighten.
“But, of course. How could you know?”
“What don’t I know?”
“Well, her father and I didn’t really want to mention it before. We felt it would have…well, devalued our loss and Beverly’s memory if we’d made it public. It would have become a part of show business, and it isn’t show business to us...”
“No. But you say Beverly spoke to Jesse Gadden?”
“Only by phone, but...” Suddenly tears were welling. “I like to think Beverly died thinking about that call.”
“He called her?”
“She was on the voice mail when I got home from playing golf. She just said, ‘Guess what, Mom! Guess who called me a minute ago. Jesse! Jesse Gadden. Can you believe it? Jesse Gadden called me!’ I could hear the excitement in her voice. She was giggling all the time, you know that little laugh she had when she was excited.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No, not really. She just repeated it. She said he called her on her cellphone! Out of nowhere. That she just picked it up and said ‘hello’ and there he was, talking to her and playing her something off his new album. ‘Like in a dream,’ she said. ‘Right here in the middle of Ireland.’ And then, there was a little family thing we had...”
Kate waited.
The emotion had burst, tears were flowing, but Carol Dennis wanted to say it. “She said, ‘What a day for a daydream!’ Like the song, you know. Mark and I always used to say that around the house when she was a little girl. Then she suddenly said she had to go, that she had something to do for Jesse, and she’d just called to say hello and goodbye and that she loved us...”
Kate felt in the pocket of her jacket and passed Carol Dennis a handkerchief.
“I’m sorry,” Beverly’s mother wiped her eyes. “I thought I was being so brave. Maybe I should have gone straight back to Chicago. It’s just that…there’s nothing to look forward to there, anymore.”
Kate allowed herself just one question. “You don’t know what time Beverly called you, do you, Mrs Dennis?”
She’d gone to the crematorium by taxi but Fraser insisted she travel with him in his car on the journey back to the studio. “Sorry you had to be dragged through all this,” he broke into her thoughts.
She didn’t reply. She was wondering whether she should tell him of her conversation with Carol Dennis. She didn’t.
“Anyway, Robin wants a couple of weeks off from anchor duty. How do you feel about manning the morning show alone from Wednesday?”
“I’d like that,” she said immediately.
“Terrific!” And, that settled, he began to talk about the complaints they’d been getting about poor reception in India.
Kate only half listened. The efficacy of space satellites wasn’t her subject. Her mind was re-running what Carol Dennis had told her. Beverly had left her voicemail message sometime between two and five Chicago time, she’d said. That was between eight and eleven in Ireland. The Galway police had said the accident had occurred at just after eleven o’clock.
But, was it really possible that Gadden had called Beverly? She and Seb had gone around Galway for days asking about Jesse Gadden Monaghan. They would have left their mobile numbers with anyone they thought might help, so Gadden could have got it from any number of people, and Kate herself had told him her name.
But why would he want to talk to her? And what was it he asked her to do for him?
Chapter Twenty Four
October 19:
They had breakfast at a pavement cafe in Covent Garden. Kate arrived early and watched as a solitary street performer, a raven-haired girl wearing a red velvet dress and an old top hat, played a clarinet on the cobbles in front of the Inigo Jones church. Because it was too early in the day for most tourists, and perhaps equally because a solo of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto probably wasn't to everyone's taste, the girl was mainly playing for free. But there was a dignity with which she practised her music, an air of her having been transported to a private world. And Kate found herself wondering where the girl’s thoughts went as she played.
When Greg arrived, carrying his bag and striding across the street like a loping exclamation mark, he greeted her over-loudly. He'd been covering a Muse concert for a BBC rock programme the previous night, he explained, and thought he might have gone slightly deaf.
She told him about the day trippers congregating at anywhere called Tarlton as he waited for his croissant.
He shook his head, balefully. "I should have warned you. You don't want to hang around on chat rooms for rock fans. Some of those people are serious anoraks, trainspotters a-go-go, howling-at-the-moon crazy. You log into a Jesse Gadden interpretation forum and you really are dancing with the dandelions."
Then she told him what Carol Dennis had said about Gadden telephoning Beverly.
He listened, looking expressionlessly at her through his round tortoiseshell glasses. “And?”
"Well, I don’t know. I mean, I thought you ought to know," she said lamely.
"Why?"
"Well, Seb Browne and Beverly were investigating Gadden, too? Like you."
Across the square a flock of pigeons rose in noisy, flapping unison. "You know what you just implied, don't you?"
She felt awkward. She hadn't wanted to suggest anything. Putting though
ts into words made them more real. "Well, think about it! Two people are killed in an accident on a straight, empty road shortly after they discover something potentially damaging about someone very, to use your own word, 'powerful'."
"Coincidence."
"As a journalist I don't think I believe in coincidence."
"Why? Because it kills too many good stories?” he teased.
"Bear with me. Supposing that very powerful somebody, or someone working for him, wanted to shut Beverly and Seb up before they could repeat a damaging allegation."
"Ah! Conspiracy now."
She couldn't win. "And as a former historian I should beware of conspiracy theories too, right?"
Greg looked at her. "Think about it, Kate. Do you really believe that a man who’s given millions to charity, who is universally loved, could really be involved? I mean, the guy might be a monster in his personal life and a fetishist in bed. But even if he had some motive we don't know about, how do you stage-manage a murder to look like an accident in the middle of Ireland when you're in Cornwall? Didn't the Irish police say they found nothing mechanically wrong with the car?"
She nodded.
He summed up. "I know a lot of people think he's God, although personally I still prefer Eric Clapton…but not even Jesse Gadden could have masterminded this.”
She stared out across the piazza for a long moment. “You’re right. I’m going mad. They'll lock me up again. Throw away the key next time."
"Probably," Greg smiled.
Out on the cobbles a young harlequin had now replaced the clarinet player, and was juggling yellow and blue skittles high into the sky.
"Not that Gadden doesn’t run a weird organisation,” Greg suddenly added.
Kate looked up.”
"I’ve been digging around. All his lawyers, accountants, marketing and publicity people are the best professionals money can buy. And they’re all very straight. But in many ways they're outsiders themselves."
